Religious Virtue Quotes

If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment.

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

How can there be pride in a contrite heart? Humility is the earliest fruit of religion.

Forasmuch as this land of Ireland is depending and belonging justly and rightfully to the imperial crown of England, for increase in virtue in Christ’s religion within the said land of Ireland, and to repress and extirpate all errors, heresies and other enormities and abuses, heretofore used in our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors … shall be taken and reputed the only supreme head on Earth of the whole church of Ireland

Which is more misshapen,--religion without virtue, or virtue without religion?

The Lord, Jesus Christ, is our perfect example of patience.

It will always be considered a praiseworthy undertaking to urge the most obstinate and incredulous to abide by the principles that impel men to live in society. There are, therefore, three distinct classes of vice and virtue: the religious, the natural, and the political. These three classes should never be in contradiction with one another.

Religion must be loved as a kind of country and nursing-mother. It was religion that nourished our virtues, that showed us heaven, that taught us to walk in the path of duty.

God did not send a concept, an idea, or a virtue. He sent his Son. Follow the God of love, not love as your god.

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

Delicate humor is the crowning virtue of the saints.

The virtue of Christianity is obedience.

I have always known that the best of the Saracens could out-Christian many of us Christians.

Obedience is a virtue of so excellent a nature, that Our Lord was pleased to mark its observance upon the whole course of His life; thus He often says, He did not come to do His Own will, but that of His Heavenly Father.

Morals are built on religious faith. Virtue is built on morality and influences a culture.

He who wisheth to enter Paradise at the best door must please his father and mother.

All who have been great and good without Christianity would have been much greater and better with it. If there be, amongst the sons of men, a single exception to this maxim, the divine Socrates may be allowed to put in the strongest claim. It was his high ambition to deserve, by deeds, not by creeds, an unrevealed heaven, and by works, not by faith, to enter an unpromised land.

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.

The householder must always please his wife with money, clothes, love and faith and never do anything to disturb her. That man who has succeeded in getting the love of a chaste wife has succeeded in his religion and has all the virtues.

Of all the communities raised among men you [believing Moslems] are the best ...

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did.